ANGELA B. PAN

Yesterday was a great day. The kind of day where you go out and get ice cream to celebrate – Dairy Queen vanilla soft serve and dipped in chocolate to be exact. So after Andrew and I basically inhaled our ice cream we set off to go to the Tidal Basin for a little walk around at sunset.

First of all, it was DEFINIETLY tour bus season. I don’t think I have seen so many people at the National Mall at one time. It was kind of insane. But that didn’t even matter because as soon as we parked, I noticed this amazingly bright rainbow. I walked over to the pedestrian bridge as fast as I could and saw how the rainbow was coming right out of the Jefferson Memorial. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything so perfect. Andrew ran to the bathroom while I was having the time of my life capturing the rainbow. I didn’t want to move because I was afraid the rainbow would fade away but I saw it for a good 20 minutes before it started disappearing in the clouds.

It was all good because the sunset that followed the rainbow was equally as cool. It’s been a while since we had such great weather conditions. Thank you lightning storm that passed earlier in the day. But I am so grateful for that rainbow and sunset. It made for the perfect ending to an already great day. I won’t even mention the gummy bears we got on our way back home. LOL

Have a great weekend everyone, especially to all the mamas out there. I appreciate you! Special shout out to my mom. The more I grow up, the more I see you in me. It’s especially evident when I look in the mirror. OMG.

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/125th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Yesterday’s sunrise was amazing. I checked my weather app the night before and it looked very promising. So I was excited to get out to the Tidal Basin, shoot sunrise and check on the status of the cherry blossoms.

You can see in this image that they are budding. I may have seen one or two trees that had a couple of blossoms on them but for the most part they looked like this. They definietly won’t be blooming this week. Hopefully by the end of next week. However the color in the sky and the cherry blossoms were not my main focus once I arrived. It was all the flooding that was on the sidewalks! There was so much water everywhere. A lot of the southern part of the Tidal Basin, close to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, had large puddles and some were so big that they were impassable. It had got to the point where I really regretted my decision of wearing sneakers instead of rain boots. It made the grass all muddy and overall a really swampy situation.

I’ve seen the Tidal Basin flood before, but there had always been a reason. This day for example was right after we had a huge thunderstorm so obviously it was flooded. This day was crazy foggy and there was a lot of moisture in the air so I’m assuming that’s why it flooded. But we haven’t had any rain or snow in almost a week. There really is no reason why the sidewalks should have been flooded like they were. It’s bananas.

So if you’re like me and want to do something about it, check out the Trust for the National Mall’s website so we can help protect the Tidal Basin and Cherry Blossoms.

The camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/40th of a second and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

If you haven’t noticed, one of my all time favorite things to photograph are the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin every spring. It may get crowded and it may get over done, but I don’t know I just love them. It makes me so happy to walk around these big trees and feel like flowers are all around me. My absolute favorite is when we get a little gust of wind and you see the pedals flying off the trees. It’s literally like I’m in a winter wonderland of pretty, pink petals and I just get that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

So I started thinking, why do I like photographing these flowers so much? I think it all started from my Grandma. I call her Nai Nai. She lived with us all throughout my elementary school years. One of the clearest visions I have from that time is sitting at a desk with her and watching her paint Chinese water color paintings. I remember she’d spend hours practicing her strokes. She’d have one piece of paper and practice painting the same flower over and over again. I just loved watching it.

I’m not much of a painter but her love of flowers have rubbed off on me. If you look up from my desk, one of the first things you’ll see is one of her flower paintings (still waiting to be framed) and it makes me so happy. I think I’m subconsciously channeling my Nai Nai when I’m out taking pictures of the cherry blossoms.  Recently we were looking through my phone and I was showing her some of my photography. Every time I showed her a flower image, she’d look up at me, smile and say “PRETTY!” Other memorials and things, not so much. But if there was a flower, “PRETTY!” 😀

The settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/15th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Last but not least, my personal favorite time to see reflections is during cherry blossom season in Washington DC.

I know it’s a little unfair since the Tidal Basin itself can be super reflective, but this was a special day. This was a super, super foggy day out where hardly anything was visible except for these amazing cherry trees. I remember capturing this around 9am. The tide was really high so the water was overflowing onto the sidewalks. Luckily, I was wearing my rain boots and was able to walk around in the puddles. This gave me a perspective that no one else was able to capture or if they did, they were not able to stay in the water for that long. If you look on the bottom right hand corner of the image, you can see a slight color variation on the cherry blossom branch in the reflection. That was the line divide of the sidewalk and the water itself. CRAZY right? Definietly the best day of cherry blossom photography ever in history of all the world.

The camera settings for this image was F6.3 at 1/40th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm. I remember purposely not using my wide angle for this image because I felt like it would have added way too much to the image. Either too many trees on the left or too much white space on the right. This was captured at 28mm and it worked out perfectly.

Let me know what you thought of this week’s reflection images. Did you like the series? Should I do more of them in the future with other themes?
In case you missed the past couple of days, here’s what you missed: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

Have a great weekend, everyone!

A quick break from autumn Maine images to show off Washington DC’s beautiful sunrise from yesterday. Sunrise is around 7:15ish now, so I have to take advantage of the later wake up call while I can. I shot this at the Tidal Basin on the little footbridge between the Jefferson Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial. It’s an angle that I’ve always wanted, but wasn’t sure I could get. I’m so glad it actually worked out this time.

Since I’ve been shooting DC sunrises for years now, I’m finding it to be a challenge to photograph it in new, different ways. I was super happy with the way this one turned out. My favorite part about the image is the color change between the two peep holes. The transition from cool to warm tones in a photograph is always something I strive for. I feel like it completes the whole color story and really adds a lot of dimension in a photograph. Plus the reflections of the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial look super cool too.

In order to capture this, my camera settings were F/6.3 at 1/20th of a second and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens. This was shot handheld although I did try to shoot it with my tripod. I just couldn’t get the tripod at the level that I wanted and I was constantly moving around to make sure the the monuments were centered, so the tripod just didn’t work out. Now that I think of it, I must have looked like I was spying on someone while I was sitting on the sidewalk and moving my neck all around to make sure everything lined up correctly. LOL, oh well. It’s not the first time I looked crazy for an image.

Great day to honor a great man. Thank you Dr. King.

If you head to the tidal basin at the right time, the memorial GLOWS. Sunrise is the right time. *thumbs up emoji*